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Modern Exalted
The Ebon Dragon won. Creation was reduced to its shadow, and his will alone now rules all there is. Gaia, Autochton, Luna and the five Maidens were killed one after the other. At the moment the Maiden of Endings, Saturn, was killed, though, the Wheel of Ages stopped, as time became stagnated and evolution from that point became impossible. This event led to the momentary awakening of Pluto, the Maiden of Hours, whose utmost purpose of existence was to protect the Wheel (she exists in all moments in time, so her death in the Primordial War was enough only to put her to sleep in future moments). She could not save Creation, but she ensured the continuity of the Wheel by transferring it and the Loom of Fate (with the pattern spiders) to another plane (designed by the Primordials, but abandoned as it proved itself unable to process the Games of Divinity) through the Well of Udr and implanting part of the remaining Essence of the Unconquered Sun, Luna, each of the other five Maidens and the Elemental Dragons into specific points of the Wheel. She then proceeded to instruct Asna Firstborn to weave the Loom so that those most excellent Essences should find a suitable home in that new place, somewhere as close to Creation as the plane could possibly conceive, and handed her the twenty Exaltations she got from Autochton but never had the chance to infuse with her own Essence, to awaken the dwellers of that plane to the higher truths when they proved themselves to be ready. After all was said and done, the Late Maiden collapsed the Well of Udr, so that that last hope remained safe and sound from any Primordial presence, whatever happenned in Creation after that is pure speculation. It took aeons, but Asna and her progeny eventuallly found a place suitable to harbor the Essences of the Incarnae and the Dragons, she promptly inputed the coordinates into the Wheel of Ages, just on the exact moment its pointer reached the time designated to release the Essences. That place is known to us as Earth. The Essence of the Unconquered Sun spawned in our Sun, while the Essence of Luna appeared on the core of our Moon and the Essence of the Maidens found their way into the respective planet of our solar system. The Essence of the Dragon of Fire crashed somewhere in the Saara desert while the Dragon of Water's Essence went deep into the crevice known as the Marianca trench, the Essence of the Dragon of Air reached the peak of the Vinson massif as the Dragon of Wood's Essence landed on the Amazon rainforest, finally, the Essence of the Dragon of Earth landed on the Tibetan plateau. Each of these Essences were granted an Exaltation to attune to (the Sun and the Moon receiving five each instead). For twelve thousand years those Essences remained asleep, being charged up by the extreme environment surrounding each one. During this time, Asna has been weaving the Loom in way to assure that, when the Essences do awaken, there will be suitable vessels to be gifted with Exaltation. Through this selective evolution she was able to reproduce the humans of Creation in every way that matters. On the turning of the year 2016, those Divine Essences will reach their full potential and awaken, spreading their Exaltations and stablishing Dragon Lines around the world. Asna has tried to prepare the resident humans for this revolutionary event by subtly enlightening some mortals to the history of Creation, books were written, but unfortunately did not reach an infinitesimal of the population Asna intended them to. Nevertheless, soon seven billion humans who have never had any experience with true magic will be exposed to twenty people that seem to challenge everything they knew about reality. Those people, free of the Great Curse, will shape the history of the world as a single perfect circle of Exalted. The fate of the dead remains a mystery even to Asna, as her and her Pattern Spiders are always too busy keeping the Loom working in this strange environment to bother with these questions. The Terrestrial Exaltations function now as Celestial ones in the sense that their offspring cannot fully exalt, and now seek another worthy human instead of ceasing to exist after death like the faint Terrestrial Exaltations of Creation. The Incarnae and the Elemental Dragons must now themselves choose who exalts when an Exalted dies. Elsewhere is still accessible by Charms that use it, so if Earth should have any way to contact Creation, that would be the way to go. The Wheel of Ages is ending the first quarter of the First Age. Deep space and other unexplored wild places are considered to be Wyld only for the purpose of Charms that make use of it. Samsara and Shinma exist in this world, but gods are absent. The Loom of Fate is located inside the singularity on the center of the Andromeda galaxy, it now also serves as a safe for the Wheel of Ages. Thaumaturgy do exist, but without the Shell of the Salinan Workings, mortals take fifty times the time needed to learn a Degrree than it usually took in Creation (double experience and bonus points costs as well, double again the necessary time if one does not have a mentor or an instruction manual, which are rare to the extreme on the present age, as such, each point of both Mentor and Artifact counts as three points), Procedures take a number of years to learn equal to their Degree level and cost either six experience points or two bonus points each, requiring Occult 1, 3 and 5 for each Degree level, all this may be subject to change as soon as the Exalted start to assimilate their newfound knowledge and power, and spreading it to the masses (or not). Artifacts are either technological devices or thaumaturgical manual, as a rule of thumb. Learning Sorcery does not require passing any of the five Trials, yet...